


mending babylon

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fire, Mentions of Caulfield, Mentions of Injuries, S02 Never Happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: alex should have known better than to enter that room on his own, but for the first time in his life he makes the mistake of listening to his gut
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72





	mending babylon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frenziedblaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frenziedblaze/gifts).



> Prompt: **Malex + burning house.** Please heed the warnings.
> 
> Title comes from _Fire On The Mountain_ by Hanson.
> 
> Beta'ed by the always amazing [manesalex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/manesalex). Thanks a lot for your help with this!

Alex is alone in a long, creepy corridor that should scare him off, but he is oddly encouraged by the vibe of peril he’s feeling as he checks the walls and the doors, his gun aimed in one hand, the fingers caressing the trigger, ready for any eventuality.

He’s a soldier. He’s fought for his country. He’s killed for their freedom. He’s been willing to _die_ , several times over. And yet he’s only felt alive, he’s only felt a purpose, when he’s set himself to help untangle his family legacy from Michael’s past.

That’s why they’re all here, in this house on top of a hill somewhere south of Roswell, searching for answers about what happened in Caulfield for years — they have managed to understand some things, like the role the DeLuca family had in the whole scheme of things or the way his own father has been torturing aliens and humans alike, just because they were betrayed by their own neighbors, their own _friends_. Alex feels like he’s living in some sort of second-world-war-esque reality, and he’s the anti-nazi soldier who gets to save a whole race from obliteration.

If only it wasn’t his own family he has to fight against.

The last door is ajar when he reaches it. Alex should have known better than to trust anything that happens in a building that’s literally in the middle of nowhere, but he’s blindsided by his need to right his family’s wrongs. He simply pushes the door more open, and enters the room, gun first.

He has to remember they came here in the first place so they could understand more about where Max, Isobel and Michael belong. He has to remember that he’s here because of Michael and what Michael means to him. After everything they have gone through — after the waiting and the fighting and the coming out of the closet in a whirlwind of emotions — Alex isn’t ready to give up on Michael, even if it means that he has to help him find every bit of information he needs to build a spacecraft and leave Earth behind.

Alex cranes his neck when he fully steps into the room, adjusting his eyes to the sudden decimation of light. The room is mostly dark, except for a small firepit in the middle of it. Alex approaches the spot, curious about why anyone would want to start a fire inside a room, and he misses the moment the door closes at his back, seemingly of it’s own volition.

He feels a hard blow to the back of his head before everything turns black.

There’s something blocking his airway when he comes to, making him wheeze and cough. He’s disoriented at first, not knowing where he is or why he is here, but after a few seconds of staying in place, Alex Manes decides he’s been indecisive enough in a situation like this one. He places his hands at his sides on the ground and pushes off until he’s sitting with his back against the closer wall, trying to catch his breath as he assesses the predicament he’s currently in.

When Alex looks up from the ground, his neck stiff and his head sore, he realizes heʼs trapped inside a circle of fire. 

“Guess I really am in one of the circles of hell,” he tries to joke, mostly to himself since there’s no one else in the room, but even to his ears his voice sounds strained and trembling. 

He remembers the last time he was surrounded by fire — how young heʼd been back then, how hot everything has become in a matter of seconds, how panic had taken over most of his unit — and he swallows down his nervousness. Oxygen will soon become a priceless commodity, if smoke doesn’t render him unconscious before, so he has to try to breathe like during any other normal event in his life. He canʼt afford to lose consciousness among the chaos unfolded around him — he hasnʼt survived hell in a desert away from home only to perish in the same dusty sands that have seen him grow up and become a dejected adult. 

He doesn’t remember much of the moments prior to waking up inside a burning room. He recalls entering the building, which had seemed abandoned upon their first inspection, and ordering Kyle, Guerin and Max to check the right ward while Jenna and Charlie accompanied him to the left one. Liz and Maria had remained outside, waiting by the cars conveniently hidden behind the undergrowth wildly growing in the fields belonging to the house, while Rosa and Isobel had been left in Roswell in their attempt to divert attention in case his father decided to try to mess up with them again. Rosa Ortecho always was a force of nature, never scared of anything or anyone and therefore she had been appointed to act as guard of their secrets back home. Teamed up with Isobel Evans, they were almost unstoppable.

He should have known better than to enter an old building without enough back up — he should have learned from Caulfield, but, just like everything about Michael Guerin, Alex has thrown caution to the wind and heʼs ended up stranded inside a ring of fire. Worst of it, though, is the knowledge that heʼs dragged his friends with him in this insane quest — heʼs brought them to a dangerous situation once again, and heʼs forced Liz and Maria to watch as outsiders while the whole building erupts in flames. 

He’s taken back to his worst nightmare, to endless dunes that held all his demons, to starry nights when everything seemed possible. Alex sighs as he attempts to move, pain shooting up his right leg in waves. His mind wavers between the moment he’s living right now — the flames and the archives and the walls closing in on him — and the moment he realized that he might not make it out of Iraq alive. His soul is torn, and for a second he’s back to the place where it all ended for him. He’s back to the collapsing building and his team being caught up in the crossfire, he’s back to the searing pain and the crushing weight of losing so much more than a limb.

Alex needs to get out of here, for his own sake and that of his friends’, for his own sanity. He groans as he moves to a sitting position, his back aching from what he’s sure has been a hard fall after a blow on the head, if the ache in his neck is any indication.

He coughs as the smoke thickens around him. Alex tries to stand up, but his bad leg gives out underneath him and he falls in a heap of bones and flesh once again to the floor. He snakes his way as close to the door as possible, finding a small gap in the flames — it’s narrow enough that his jacket catches fire on the sleeve as he squeezes himself through the ring and through to the other side. The metallic door is molten under his fingers, and the heat singes through his skin, leaving marks that will last for longer than he might have wished them to. He tries to pull at the door, turning and twisting the knob as the fire approaches, but it won’t budge. For as much as he attempts to open it, Alex can’t seem to make the knob function. He’s trapped in an inferno, alone with his fears, as he shakes the door over and over again, finally giving in to the panic.

His throat aches by the time the flames engulf him.

* * *

Michael reaches the hallway where the smoke is coming from sooner than his brother, and certainly sooner than the doctor, who’s still limping a few feet behind them. The Cameron sisters are following suit, covering their traces and shooting at anyone who dares to show up in their pursuit. He’s felt the pull of Alex’s pysche calling him, the burden of the fear taking over, and he hasn’t hesitated, his legs guiding him blindlessly throughout the corridors of a building that’s become a trap. 

“He’s in there!” he exclaims when he reaches a metallic door by the end of a long hallway. “I can feel him, he’s inside!”

“How can you be so sure, Guerin?” Charlie asks when she and her sister reach them. “Everything’s smokey here.”

“There are so many things you still don’t understand,” Jenna tells her sister, stepping in front of her. “But I guess you’re going to find out right away. Can you open the door?”

“I can’t see what’s on the other side,” Michael despairs. He places one hand on the door and he keeps touching it even though it’s burning his skin. “I can’t burst it open if I’m not sure if he’s going to be near the door when it explodes.”

“Explodes?” Charlie blurts out. When Michael turns around to meet her eye, he can see she’s frowning, her brows knit together so closely that Michael would have found it comical if they weren’t trying to get Alex out of what seems a full-on inferno. “Are you carrying explosives in the middle of a burning building, Guerin?”

“No,” Kyle says when he finally catches up with them. “ _He_ is the explosive. Blow it up, Guerin. That amount of smoke—it won’t be safe for humans in there much longer.”

Michael nods curtly. They have yet to explain everything to the last Cameron sister to join their ranks, but there’s no time now. They had expected to be able to have a bit of a background before they dropped the ball on Charlie’s court like a bomb, but Michael has to work with what he has in his hands right now. Max shakes his head as he begins to cough. 

“Get it open, or we’re all going to end like roasted chicken.”

Michael doesn’t have to think twice. He still takes a moment to center himself, to focus on finding Alex’s heat among the flames he knows are threatening to claim him — because those flames are threatening them all as well, and the moment he manages to open the door the fire will spread quickly. He isn’t sure he will be able to placate the flames long enough for them all to leave, and he doesn’t want a reenactment of Caulfield, with Alex spewing love declarations hidden behind loaded words.

“Step back!” he exclaims, both to the people around him and to the man behind the door. There’s a small quiver in his mindscape, in the place where he knows he can meet Alex halfway if he concentrates enough. There’s no time though. “I said, step back!”

He growls, pushing his hand against the metal, feeling it shaking under his touch until the door gives in with a loud noise, the knob and the lock flying around as the door falls off its hinges. And within the metal plate that miraculously breaks off in one piece comes Alex Manes, a few cuts and bruises over his scalp and his cheeks, but also not completely broken. He’s wheezing as he falls into Michael’s arms; he struggles to catch him while he attempts to contain the fire that’s now threatening to spread throughout the whole corridor. In the end, the pull of the flames is stronger, and Michael yields Alex’s weight over to Max, who helps him to stand on his feet.

Michael spares a glance at him — Alex looks exhausted, and he has streaks of black smeared across his face, mixing with the bloody red and the translucent of tears, and there’s a small fire lit up on his sleeve that Kyle is quick to put out. But he seems fine, albeit shaken up and a little scorched. Since he has to focus on the fire inside the room that’s now pushing to be freed, Michael breaks eye contact with Alex at the same moment Alex chooses to look back up at him. He shakes his head before turning around once again and stretches his arm even further, willing the matter surrounding the flames to kill the oxygen so the fire won’t go any further.

When all the flames are put out, he falls to the ground on his knees, drained.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Kyle says with his doctor’s voice, the one nobody ever objects to. He throws Alex’s arm over his own shoulders to help him walk away from the mess of fused metal and ashes while Max rushes to Michael and lifts him up with little to no resistance from his brother. Michael wheezes a bit, coughing up blood as he drags himself across the corridor. 

The Cameron girls still clear their path as they walk slowly toward the exit, their reasons to enter the building in the first place forgotten as the escape. Liz and Maria jump at the sight of their group, scattered and injured and in such bad shape that Michael thinks they aren’t going to stop mother-henning them for a long time.

“What happened back there?” Liz questions while she helps them onto the back of the truck, Maria already at the steering wheel. “It looks like you’ve gone through hell back!”

“Pretty much the truth,” Alex coughs. His skin still has a patina of grey ashes on, and the white of his eyes stand out. Michael reaches out and grabs his hand, intent on never let go. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find the files.”

“Don’t,” Michael hisses, squeezing Alex’s hand. “I almost lost you in there. We’ll find a way to get all the information, I’m sure.”

“But, Michael—”

“There will be more information,” Michael insists, shaking Alex’s arm slightly. “There’s only one you, Alex. I can’t lose you, not again.”

Alex has the decency to look ashamed. Michael pulls him into his embrace and hugs him tight. “We’ll be fine. We will be. I promise.”

“You always keep your promises,” Alex mutters into Michael’s sweater, and that’s all Michael needs right now.

“That I do,” he whispers back, threading a hand through Alex’s hair as he stares into the open horizon, Maria driving them away from the remnants of the burning house where they thought they’d find all the answers. And he realizes, with the calm that brings being right out of the storm, that he doesn’t need those answers now. Maybe ever.

All he needs is already with him — his family, his friends, his soulmate — and he’s not willing to give up on that for the feeble promise of whatever past he left behind when his mother put him into a pod to save his life, over seventy years ago.


End file.
